The action in Neal Baer’s just-published debut novel is so cinematic, it reads like a prime-time thriller.

“Kill Switch,” co-authored with Jonathan Greene, is imbued with Baer’s medical knowledge along with suspense on the order of “Silence of the Lambs.” It was actually first imagined as a movie.

“Jon and I wrote an outline nine years ago but never wrote the script. I literally put it in my bottom drawer,” Baer said by phone from Los Angeles. A book agent called, looking for a medical thriller. Baer proffered a 35-page outline. After he wrote three sample chapters, then two more, the agent landed a three-book deal with Kensington Publishing Corp. The movie rights sold next.

Now the reader can even picture the heroine’s face: It’s Izzie! Katherine Heigl, who made the leap from “Grey’s Anatomy” to the movies via Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up,” is set to portray Claire Waters, the young forensic psychiatrist at the center of “Kill Switch.” Once a doctor on “Grey’s,” in “Kill Switch” Heigl will behave more like Mariska Hargitay on “Law & Order: SVU” if she had a degree in psychiatry.

Baer, a Denver native who attended Cherry Creek High School and Colorado College before getting his M.D., is a longtime TV writer-producer: “ER,” “Law & Order: SVU” and, currently, “A Gifted Man.” He has used his career to inform audiences while entertaining them, on issues like AIDS, and has taught a course on “social documentary” at CC. A Harvard Medical School graduate, he considered psychiatry before settling on pediatrics. He finished medical school during hiatuses from “ER.”

Co-authors Baer and Greene — who are also co-executive producers on “SVU” — will sign books at 7:30 p.m. Thursday at Denver’s Tattered Cover Book Store, 2526 E. Colfax Ave.

Baer’s local connections run deep: he’s a trustee at Colorado College and on the board of The Unreasonable Institute in Boulder as a mentor on social entreprenurial projects. His motto there: “I create social change through storytelling.”

He reminisces with friend and colleague John Wells (“ER”) about Denver. They and Gary Magness (“Precious”) went to Cherry Creek High School together. “What was it about Cherry Creek …” he wonders, that turned out three overachieving TV/movie producers?

The shift from TV or movies to novel writing, he said, offers “huge new freedom you have to work with carefully.” Instead of the collaborative process with the writer at the center of a circus, “the circus is just you.”

More specifically, “you get to say what the character’s thinking. That’s very difficult to do in a script.” On the page, you don’t get to use the actor’s face to telegraph the information. It’s a tradeoff, he said, but good writing still means demonstrating beliefs through actions.

“Gifted Man” on CBS

Baer’s “A Gifted Man,” which has struggled in the ratings, will get a better time slot on CBS starting Feb. 17. It moves to 8 p.m. locally on KCNC-Channel 4, with three additional episodes benefitting from “Undercover Boss” as a hefty lead-in. But the series is unlikely to be renewed for a second season.

Even with 8 million to 9 million viewers a week, Baer still has to worry about drawing a large enough audience. But he claims he’s never been enticed by cable, where ratings are less important and creative freedom can be greater.

“I love network television,” he said. “You do get huge numbers of people. Cable is great but I’ve never felt I’ve been handcuffed. ‘SVU’ is as edgy as anything on cable. It’s not as edgy visually, but that’s fine with me.” He prefers more psychological, less gruesome violence.

He claims not to find much difference between broadcast and cable, besides nudity and language. “That shouldn’t be the raison d’etre for doing cable.”

“A Gifted Man” pushes matters of spirituality, just as “Kill Switch” weighs faith versus science. Baer believes Western medicine doesn’t deal well with the impact of environment, relationships and other aspects of healing. He mulls how best to use meditation, acupuncture and other non-Western approaches. “I don’t think one modality has all the answers.”

CBS has a history with spirituality-tinged shows (“Touched by an Angel,” “Joan of Arcadia.”) It remains to be seen how supportive the network will be as “Gifted Man” struggles in its Friday-night slot.